John, you absolutely need to interview this new customer of our's in Boston… she's only 25 years old and it sounds like her Indoor Cycling Studio is really doing well!
I was talking with Gina Perrault from MINDBODY Online last month, at their conference in LA. I had asked her if she knew of a studio owner with an interesting story to tell.
A few days later Gina connected me with Jessica Bashelor (now 26 – she had a birthday last week) and her Handle Bar Cycling Studio in South Boston.
Jess is The Handle Bar's owner and manager. She grew up a competitive swimmer and developed a love for fitness at an early age. Attending college at Northeastern University, Jess discovered her love for group exercise, specifically indoor cycling classes. Now, 7 years later, Boston is Jess' home and cycling is her passion. An avid music lover and listener, Jess is motivated by rhythm, calmed by acoustics, and touched by the lyrics of songwriters old and new. She opened The Handle Bar to offer classes with the intensity she craves, set to playlists composed with care. Jess rides to house music, hip hop, and heavy rock… Her classes are crafted to challenge riders physically, and inspire them to achieve greatness both on and off the bike.
If you're running or contemplating opening a new studio, Jessica shares some excellent ideas about understanding your customer demographic and connecting with them. Her studio's blog regularly features participants > a great way to make people feel valued and appreciated – not to mention they share these with all of their friends 🙂
You can listen below or find this episode + over 100 more on your portable device by
Studio owner Paul Harmeling joins me to discuss Full Psycle Indoor Cycling Studio that he owns with his two other partners (Shelly Scott & Kris Pennell) in Orange County, CA.
I observed two classes when I visited and was very impressed by the diversity of the participants in attendance; from a bunch of teenage girls to professional athletes. Fantastic!
Paul Harmeling is a Co-Founder, Instructor and the President of FULL PSYCLE. If the number of fights breaking out at front desks over admission to classes is correlated with popularity, Paul is one of Orange County’s most popular cycling instructors. With a genetic predisposition for group exercise gained from his mom Kathy, a prodigious aerobics and step instructor, and a life-long love of exercise and coaching, Paul made the move from the back of the cycling studio to the front in 2008. The upbeat, motivating music and intense, endless energy in Paul's class most resemble those commonly encountered at a Vegas pool party, with bikes and sports bras supplanting bottle service and bikinis. His class will take you to the brink of collapse and leave you in a state of euphoria. Paul has taught previously at Equinox and 24 Hour Fitness, and in 2012 was one of six instructors in Southern California selected to instruct at the Challenged Athletes Foundation’s Tour de Cove. Paul has a degree in Biology from UCSD and Masters Degrees in Engineering and Business from MIT and UC Irvine, respectively.
Studio details:
FULL PSYCLE 230 E 17th St., #100 Costa Mesa, CA 92627
Phone: (949) 631-2222 Email: info@fullpsycle.com
Indoor Cycles: Spinner® Blade Ion
In class display system of rider performance metrics: Performance IQ
Listen to Paul's interview below (Free or ICI/PRO Registration Required) — Click Here. Opens in a new tab.
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Peloton Cycle recently raised $307,332 through a Kickstarter project to help fund the design and manufacture their new Peloton Indoor Cycle. Awesome on its own, but they also have plans to live-stream digital classes directly to the user's home from the new Peloton Cycling Studio they're building in New York City.
And not just your garden variety Indoor Cycling classes. Nope. Their plans are to employee the very best Instructors on the planet and to recruit them, they're willing to pay these Rock Star Instructors up to $500.00 for each class they teach.
Sound interesting? You can visit their Instructor's Wanted page to learn more.
Here's the promo video they did for their Kickstarter project that explains everything.
Listen to my interview with Peloton's COO & Co founder Tom Cortese below and if you haven't yet, please .
Amy's fitness instructor professional liability insurance renewed this month. I offered to shop around to see if I could find the best / lowest cost annual policy – something more reasonable than the $170.00 per year charged by Markel Insurance who provided her coverage last year.
I did 🙂
We purchased a $3,000,000 Instructor liability policy from HPSO – Healthcare Providers Service Organization for only $112.00!We had a negative experience when we renewed 9/14 and have cancelled our policy with these people. Very disappointed by their customer service. Strongly suggest going somewhere else.
When Amy first started teaching Pilates at a local Catholic grade school, they required her to have a liability policy “just in case”. But in actuality the churches board wouldn't approve of using an outside contractor (Amy) without there being a policy in place that named the church as an additional insured.
That was about 6 years ago. We started with the insurance company recommended by IDEA – Philadelphia Insurance @ $170.00. But there was a catch to get their discounted rate… you needed to be an IDEA member. Fine if you already were, but, not knowing any better, we also purchased a year of IDEA @ $99.00 + the $170.00 for a total of $260.00. That's a lot and as it turned out, it ate up about a third of the potential revenue Amy had forecasted to earn over the winter.
Then we switched to Markel. Same cost, but without the hundred dollar IDEA membership.
Now what we found with HPSO is that she gets the same level of coverage, while saving $58.00. Not a king's ransom, but I know Amy and she'd much rather spend that on some cute yoga pants.
Feel free to share this with your Instructor friends.
*Different states require different types of insurance, as do the different formats you're teaching (at varying costs) so you'll need to check their site for the specific costs for where you live and teach.
I'm excited to attend the MINDBODY FitPro Conference in Los Angeles at the end of this month for a bunch of reasons. Are you planning to attend?
Please say hello if you are at the Friday morning networking breakfast. Or, if you're not afraid of heights, at the Saturday evening party up on the helicopter pad. In between you can text me 612-868-0064 so we can meetup.
There's a good chance you'll run into me at the Spinning® booth where Performance IQ will be showing off their display system, connected to the new Spinner® Blade ION indoor cycle with power. I don't have all the details yet, but it sounds like Performance IQ will be integrated at some level into the Spinpower education program. Very cool and I'm excite to hear what studio owners have to say when they see it in action + get their thoughts about using rider performance data as a retention tool.
This all connects with your MINDBODY Online system!
Tae Yoo and Mark Davids from Performance IQ invited me to attend this year and are sponsoring my trip. Thanks Guys 🙂
There are a number of workshops featuring Josh Taylor, Natashia Iacovelli, Marci Williams and others. I'm waiting on a response from Josh to know if there will be any power based classes and will update this once I know more.
Studio owners can partake in a ton of informative business sessions. Here are a few I'm hoping to attend:
Corporate Wellness: Making it Your Business — David McAtee
Join David McAtee, Sales Manager for MINDBODY Exchange, to review the latest trends in the corporate wellness market and learn how to promote your practice through the new MINDBODY Exchange.
Connecting the Dots: How to Build a Breakthrough Business– Rick Stollmeyer
Join MINDBODY Co-Founder and CEO, Rick Stollmeyer, for an inspiring discussion of what it takes to build a business from the ground up. Rick will share his own entrepreneurial journey from garage start-up to global leader, highlighting the “dots” every entrepreneur needs to connect before a business can truly break through the barriers to success.
Creating, Cultivating and Living Your Brand in the Fitness Industry — Jessica Matthews With a plethora of information and services out there, what makes you or your business different from the rest? The road to becoming a recognized and respected name in the world of health and fitness begins with identifying and embracing who you authentically are, clearly establishing what it is that you uniquely offer, and ultimately building trust and maintaining the loyalty of those that you interact with. From leveraging your knowledge and skills to optimizing your reach and enhancing how you communicate your message, discover how to establish and grow your personal brand while inspiring others to live happier, healthier, fitter lives.
You can download the full schedule, session descriptions and register here. You can save 20% on the registration fee using the coupon code READY4FITPRO
The Senior Group Fitness Instructor and I spent a weekend in Door County WI last month. Lots of quaint little towns to explore along the shores of Lake Michigan. We did what most tourists do as we walked along all the shops and restaurants… we stopped to check out the menus posted along the sidewalk, with the intent of finding the place where we would have dinner that evening.
I hadn't considered it at the time, but if one of the restaurants we passed didn't have a menu posted near the sidewalk, we wouldn't have considered eating there. Without some of the basic information (type of food, pricing, ambiance, entertainment, etc…) we'd never know if they had the best food in town or not.
We weren't looking for anything specific in a place to eat – the best I can tell you we were just looking for some place that fit us. Does that make sense? I guess it follows the; “I don't know what I want… but I'll know it, once I find it!”
So, is your class “menu” displayed somewhere prospective participants can find/learn more about you and your class? Or classes if you're a studio owner/manager?
I'm thinking this menu needs to be more than; “Indoor Cycling with John” which really doesn't tell you anything about me or my class. Maybe I could improve my menu by adding a picture of me and something all flowery and word-smithy like; “Experience outdoor cycling… indoors. Take a virtual training ride with John. Blah, blah, blah” which may or may not be effective. What else could you include?
Beyond your; charming / energetic personality, comprehensive knowledge of exercise physiology and dazzling smile, what else (if they could know more in advance) would be of interest to potential participants to our classes? Or your regulars for that matter?
How about your music!
Consider what primarily gets shared between members about your class:
How hard/easy is her class?She killed us this morning!
Was his music good?We rocked this morning! or What was he thinking with that playlist?
Technology from Spotify and Deezer now gives us the ability to easily share our playlists. Surge Cycle is a studio near me. On their Meet our Instructors page (Internet menu of sorts) studio owner Zion Anderson has posted a sample Spotify playlist of each instructor's class music. Here is Zion's playlist.
Now I think that's an awesome idea… now if I could get Life Time to do something similar.
John, you absolutely need to interview this new customer of our's in Boston… she's only 25 years old and it sounds like her Indoor Cycling Studio is really doing well!
